Up all night: Ye Gods, girl talk!

I'm looking for some white lingerie for a Mount Olympus-themed sex party," I tell Octavia behind the counter. My friend has just got a job at Bordello, the underwear boutique on Great Eastern Street. "Certainly, Madame. You'll need open crotch, I assume?" she jokes.

She swans around the shop picking up pants for me while my other friends Annette and Harriet pore over a book about Victorian vibrators.

"Why do you go to sex parties, Millicent?" pipes up Harriet - the squarest of us all. "Isn't your boyfriend enough for you? Or are you scared you're not enough for him?"

"Certainly not," I object. "I've had this conversation with him and we are both more than enough for each other. It's only girls that we go for, but they're just as much fun for me as they are for him, and I'm always the boss in instigating it all."

"I could never have sex with just one person for the rest of my life," contributes Octavia, poking her head through a rail of silk nighties and dumping a pile of ivory garments into my arms.

I decide to buy a neoclassical transparent chiffon negligee, and forget about anything for underneath.

Later, I'm in my bedroom getting ready for the night ahead, fixing some red grapes in my hair and hoping this party will turn out to be good. It can be so hit and miss with sex parties.

Thankfully, Neanderthal and I have only had a couple of bad experiences - one party was dominated by single men circling like vultures - though a friend told me she was given a towel and a wristband on entry to a swingers' party. She said it was like being at some sort of sex leisure centre. I choose our venues carefully as a result.



This party is called Kinky Salon and the moment Neanderthal and I walk through the door we know we are safe. The crowd is young and good-looking. The atmosphere is energetic. Pillars and drapes have turned the warehouse into a Roman temple. There's even a Roman bath-style hot tub. We head straight for it and get in naked with three other girls.

A beautiful Sri Lankan lady tells us she's come as the goddess Leto. "Well, will you let-o us join you?" I giggle.

Neanderthal becomes a spoilt god with two goddesses wrapped around him and I think about Harriet's challenge earlier. But I'm still convinced I enjoy it more than he does.